


The Dead Don't Talk

by primalrage



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Porn, Blow Jobs, Body Horror, Denial of Feelings, Enemies, Enemy Lovers, Gore, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:21:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27947465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primalrage/pseuds/primalrage
Summary: Reaper has the perfect opportunity to finish off a badly wounded Soldier 76, but he decides to save him instead. It seems like his humanity is a hell of a lot easier to cast aside than his feelings for the old soldier.
Relationships: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29
Collections: Reaper76 Free For All Secret Santa 2020





	The Dead Don't Talk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MarshyoftheBlobs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarshyoftheBlobs/gifts).



> Written for MarshyoftheBlobs for the Reaper76 Secret Santa event. They had two prompts, one was "When you find him dying on the battlefield instead of finishing him off you decide to show him mercy and ten to his injuries instead, for old times sake" and the other was "body horror smut" - so this was sort of me combining the two. 
> 
> I really hope you like it <3 
> 
> (also I couldn't think of a title at all so kudos to anyone who recognizes where the title came from lmao)

Blood seeps through the gauze, staining the white fibers the color of rust. Whoever has patched Jack up has done their best, but this is more than a simple first aid kit can handle. The dressing conceals the ugly hole that the bullet has gouged into his abdomen, but it is not enough to hide the flesh around his wound, which has turned black like poison, like rot, like death. Jack grazes the damaged skin with the tips of his fingers. Pain rips a hiss of breath from his lungs, and he jerks his hand away as an angry throb flares up somewhere deep beneath his ribcage. 

"Ana?" he tries to call, but his voice comes out weak, hardly more than a croak. 

It was Ana who dragged him here, surely. She has been saving his ass a lot lately. Jack thinks she must be right, that Talon is tampering with their bullets somehow. He doesn't know enough science to make sense of what is happening to him, but his superhuman ability to recover from even the nastiest of injuries seems to have been inhibited.

Where is here, anyway? Jack sits up. The process is slow and leaves him panting through clenched teeth like a wounded animal. It is cold enough that he can see his own breath, and his naked flesh is broken out in goosebumps. Grey light floods in through a window that has been boarded up, but the thin planks of wood are broken and slapped on at odd angles, allowing the sun to reach relentlessly in. The beams cast uneven stripes through the darkness, illuminating dust that twinkles in the air like gloomy snow. Aside from the stained, mildew-smelling mattress on the floor which Jack sits upon, there is no furniture in this room. Sage green floral wallpaper peels and hangs, exposing water-damaged drywall. The floor is concrete, coated so thick with filth that Jack can make out boot prints leading from the door and back. They're twice the size of Ana Amari's feet. The realization makes all the hairs on his arms stand to attention like an army of white down. 

That's when Jack remembers looking up at that mask the color of old bone. He remembers it all - the ringing in his ears, the blood pouring through the cracks in his gloved fingers as he covered his gunshot wound with shaking hands, the twin shotguns aimed at him, and his taunting last words to the monster known as Reaper: _"You finally get to finish the job."_ He had spat a spray of crimson across that white mask, and that is the last memory he can recall before waking up here. 

Jack should not have woken up at all. He should be dead. Reaper had the perfect opportunity to finish this nightmarish game of cat and mouse, yet he had not. Had someone else come in and saved Jack at the last second? Or is something more complicated happening here? He has a feeling it's the latter. Everything between them has always been complicated. Who is the cat, and who is the mouse, anyway? 

He hears the jingle of keys and the click of a locking mechanism. He flattens himself back down on the mattress and closes his eyes, feigning sleep, just as the door swings opened. Through the narrowest sliver of a crack between his eyelids, Jack watches a black shape move through the shadows. Reaper. He doesn't have his guns, but that doesn't make him look any less dangerous. He is carrying something. A tray? Jack can only imagine the terrifying objects that tray might bare. Weapons. Injections. Poisons. Torture devices. Has Reaper dreamed of destroying him little by little this way? Does Reaper hope to keep him screaming to his last breath? Was he spared earlier for a more prolonged and painful death now?

Even as Jack tries to lie still, he cannot control his shivering from the cold. He won't lie to himself; it isn't just the room's temperature that makes him shiver - he is afraid, too. Not much scares Jack Morrison, but feeling helpless scares him most of all. Reaper's heavy, armored boots stop close to Jack's head. There is something hanging over his arm. Reaper drapes it over him, and only then does Jack realize it is a blanket. He hates Reaper for offering him this small comfort. He doesn't like the confusing feelings that are stirred by the tiny gesture of kindness. As badly as he wants to fling the blanket off of him, his shivering stops, and his limbs are glad for the warmth. 

Reaper crouches. For a long, tense moment Jack lies still and listens to those rattling breaths. They are not the breaths of a living man. " _Wake up."_

Jack winces, and he knows that he's given himself away.

That voice... it isn't Gabriel Reyes's voice at all, and that makes him so inexplicably sad, sad enough to cry. He feels like he's losing Gabe all over again, even though Gabe is right there, close enough to touch. It is hard to believe that this is the man he watched Super Bowls with, the man who made him breakfast quesadillas when they both had days off, the man who threw his 'Over the Hill' fortieth birthday party, the man who once rubbed his back while he threw up his first shots of tequila. Their pasts are not two separate stories, but one intricately interwoven one. He had once been uncertain where Gabriel Reyes ended and Jack Morrison began. Together, they had once led the world. He has shed enough tears over this man the last few years. Mercifully, his cheeks stay dry this time. He doesn't want to look weak in front of him, even though the sound of that unfamiliar, grotesque voice has torn open all his old wounds and left them raw again. What could have happened to Gabe, to ruin his voice so thoroughly? Ana told Jack how Reaper is now a monster beneath the mask, but Jack struggles to imagine what he might see if he were to reach out and snatch it off. Ana has refused to give him any details. 

_"Wake. Up."_

Jack opens his eyes.

The skeletal mask stares down at him through empty sockets. 

Jack wants to know why Reaper did not kill him, but before his mind can mold the chaos of his thoughts into a single, helpful question, Reaper has set the tray down beside him. Jack watches the spray of dust it stirs up as it hits the concrete floor. His eyes widen when he sees what it carries - the end torn off a baguette, a bowl of broth that steams in the chilly room, a glass of water, and a pair of white pills. _"You need something on your stomach before you take anything for the pain,"_ Reaper says. 

Jack blinks up at him. "I wasn't born yesterday," he says, "who knows what you're giving me." 

Reaper laughs. The sound is terrible, and halfway through it dissolves into a hacking, dry cough. _"You've been out for fifteen hours, Jack. I had plenty of time to kill you._ "

"Then why didn't you?" Jack challenges him. 

Reaper snorts. He pulls away from Jack, rising to his feet. _"Fine. Don't take the pills. I couldn't care less if you're in pain._ "

"Why didn't you kill me, Gabe?" Jack asks again.

_"I didn't drag you here so that we could have a heart to heart."_

"So why did you drag me here? You must have had a reason."

Reaper hovers there, his shoulders heaving with each labored breath. Jack can see how the air around him grows foggy as the shadows rise off him like steam. _"Some feelings don't die as easily as men do."_

Jack scoffs. He eases himself upright, grimacing against the twists of pain in his abdomen. "So I'm where you draw the line?" he taunts Reaper, "But not Gérard? Not Amélie? They were your friends, too, Gabe." 

Reaper's shadows flare like a growing flame. Even though Jack cannot see the man's face - if a face even remains behind that mask - he can tell from the tension in his shoulders and the way his hands clench into fists that he has struck a nerve. _"I had nothing to do with what happened to them. You know that. I would never have hurt them."_

"Maybe you didn't directly have anything to do with that," Jack admits, "but the fact that you're with Talon now - it's like you're pissing on his grave." 

Reaper lunges for him. He grabs Jack by the throat, the sharpened points of his gauntleted fingers piercing into the soft flesh beneath Jack's jaw. As blood flows down Jack's neck, Reaper's dark tendrils race up the length of his arm to lap like serpent tongues at the pinpoint wounds. This is the Reaper that makes sense to Jack now, a violent monster. The Reaper from seconds ago, bringing comfort and sustenance, is the one that confuses and scares him. It is easy to separate Reaper from Gabriel Reyes, the man Jack once loved, as long as Reaper is a villain and an enemy. Any sign of Gabriel Reyes under that mask makes Jack sick with longing and terror.

_"Fuck you, Jack..."_ Reaper pants, " _Y_ _ou don't know anything about me or my plans."_

"Then enlighten me."

_"I didn't bring you here to chat."_

"Then _why_ did you bring me here? I still don't understand! Is this a part of some master plan of yours?" Jack barks at him, each furious word only creating more damage to his throat as Reaper's claws struggle around his moving muscles. He hardly even feels the pain or the electric touches of Reaper's shadows. His pale eyes blaze in the dim light. "I'm not afraid of you, Gabe. I'm not afraid of death."

_"There are things worse than death,"_ Reaper says. 

"Like what happened to you?" 

_"Or what happened to Amélie."_

"So you don't want to see me like that, but have you ever considered how much it hurts me to see you like this?" 

_"This conversation is over._ "

Reaper releases Jack's throat, pulling back towards the door. Jack grabs the ghost's forearm before he can get up, a fresh wave of agony drawing a groan from him. It's like someone has a fistful of glass and they're kneading at his midsection. He can hardly see, hardly think. When was the last time he knew pain like this? Some time before the completion of the super soldier program? It's sharp and terrible enough that he loses his energy. Reaper shrugs him off easily, and he slumps back onto the mattress as the room spins around him. 

"What are these injuries doing to me?" he asks, "You know something. You're planning something horrifying, aren't you?"

_"I'm not about to deliver some climactic monologue about Talon's plans so that you can run back home to Overwatch and try to foil them."_

This confirms two things for Jack. First, that there is indeed something biological or technological going on here that he doesn't understand. It also tells Jack that Reaper plans to release him alive. Although in what state? 

_"For old times' sake, just trust me this once, Jackie. Take the pills."_

Jack watches Reaper leave and listens to the door lock behind him. He raises a hand to his neck, feeling fresh blood there, but the tiny wounds have already healed themselves. It seems his healing abilities aren't completely shutting down. Not yet, at least.

With a sigh, Jack shifts his gaze to the tray. As unappetizing as it looks, and as suspicious as he is of Reaper, it is hard to ignore his hunger. How long had Reaper said he'd been here? Fifteen hours? Who knows how long Reaper intends to keep him hostage? Eventually, Jack will have to eat. He cannot turn away the food forever. So Jack eases himself upright and draws the tray closer. The broth is colorless and scentless. No meat or vegetables sit at the bottom, and no seasonings float at the surface. Frowning, he lifts the bowl to his mouth and sips from the rim. It's still warm and tastes salty, but otherwise bland. Chicken broth, he thinks. He slurps it all down, little by little, then tears into the bread. Once he has consumed it all, he supposes he has nothing left to lose. He swallows the pills with a gulp of water and thinks that if it kills him, then so be it. 

* * *

Jack knows what sleep paralysis is. A lot of the men and women back in the super soldier program experienced it frequently, due perhaps to the stress or whatever medications were pumped into them that day. He has heard them describe insectoid creatures descending from the ceiling, shadow men with bones broken at unnatural angles, inanimate objects floating in the corners of rooms, clouds of static or swarms of flies... There were countless horrors that had been seen, and Jack considers himself one of the lucky ones for never witnessing anything like that himself. 

Until now. 

It sits at the foot of his mattress and watches him through eyes that seem darker than the night around them. He hears it suck in each dry breath, a sound that paralyses him with dread. All he can do is stare as the demon stares back, sure the thing can hear his hammering heartbeats. Jack squeezes his eyes shut and wills the thing to disappear, but even behind the familiar comfort of his eyelids, he feels its presence in the room. He is willing to bet this has something to do with those pills that Reaper gave him; they're making him hallucinate, making him question his sanity.

_"Jack,"_ the shadow-creature whispers to him, a haunting sound that makes him shudder.

He hears the squeal of old springs as his sleep demon crawls up onto the mattress. The weight of it feels so real as it settles between his knees, crushing his legs. A mere figment of his nightmares shouldn't be able to do that, he thinks. Or perhaps that's all a part of the sleep paralysis? He can't clearly remember the stories, although, in his defense, that was all more than thirty years ago. 

He risks opening his eyes again, one at a time. The figure is hovering above him, so close that he can now see it is not a demon induced by sleep paralysis. It is Reaper. His vapors pulse and shift around him with so much energy that his shape hardly looks human in the darkness. Jack inhales, unaware that he had been holding his breath the whole time. But why is he relieved? In fact, shouldn't a real monster be more terrifying than an imagined one? 

_"Jack."_

"What do you want?" Jack asks.

_"I have considered it._ " Plumes of shadows rise off him, and Jack can see that Reaper is agitated and losing control of himself. 

"I don't understand."

_"You asked if I have ever considered how much I am hurting you,"_ Reaper explains, _"and I wanted you to know that I have. I think about it often. I have many regrets, but what we have lost is the heaviest and hardest to bare."_

"Then why don't - "

_"No,"_ Reaper interrupts him, _"Whatever way out or redemption you are about to offer, save your breath. You don't understand, Jack. You could never understand."_

"Then help me understand," Jack pleads with him.

_"No,"_ Reaper says, and that is the end of it.

For a long and tense moment, the two of them are silent aside from Reaper's hollow breaths. The shadows rise off of him, blurring his shape in the darkness. Again, Jack is struck by how different this creature is from the man who was once a pillar holding up his world. He has the urge to reach up, to fling the cowl back and tear the mask off, but he is too frightened. What sight would he find, that had so shaken Ana Amari? "I want to see your face." He knows that Reaper has done unspeakable things, but he still clings, like a fool, to his hope that Gabriel will come home to him one day, that Reaper was never real or perhaps was a double agent, or that Reaper was never Gabriel Reyes after all. Maybe if he finally gets a glimpse of the horror behind that mask, he will be able to let go of that hope. 

_"No."_

"Ana saw you already," Jack argues, "Even if you refuse to show me, all I have to do is ask her."

He reaches forward in the darkness. When his palm makes contact with the mask, he expects it to feel like bone, but, of course, it is metal. He hesitates. Reaper's shadows leap towards him, coiling around his wrist and slipping between the cracks of his fingers. The tendrils feel electric against his skin. It should feel threatening, but instead his heartbeat races. For so many years, he has wandered like a restless spirit, anchored to the world of the living by his unfinished business, hardly any more alive than this monster called Reaper, but in this moment, he no longer feels so lost. The room thrums with the sense of something significant between them, and even though it's a palpable feeling, Jack can't identify what it is.

Reaper shifts on the mattress and fidgets with something, but he does not pull away. Jack doesn't understand what he's doing, at first, but then he tears his eyes off the mask, looks down and sees that Reaper is removing his gauntlets, the pieces coming apart to reveal bare arms. Jack is so, so glad that the boarded window only allows in limited moonlight. The sight isn't pretty. These aren't the arms of Gabriel Reyes, whose skin was so handsome and brown. This flesh is sour and colorless, except for the fingers, which have gone black as rot, and the dark marbling of his vascular system around his wrists. Jack almost recoils in disgust. Surely, this can't be Gabriel Reyes? His instinct was correct; this hideous being is an imposter. Ana was mistaken, and Gabriel Reyes still lies buried in his grave. 

It's such a fragile, miniscule hope.

Reaper's hands wrap around his forearm, pinning Jack's grip in place against the mask, so that he is unable to pull it off or to jerk away. Reaper's touch is as cold as the room. Somehow, his fingers feel both impossibly strong and half-incorporeal, as though they haven't decided whether to be flesh or smoke, but either way could tear Jack to pieces. _"You cannot unsee this,"_ he warns Jack

But Jack won't be dissuaded. "I need to know it's you."

_"I can prove to you that I am Gabriel Reyes another way, but you must close your eyes, and you must trust me."_

Trust him? Jack almost laughs. How could he trust Reaper? The man is a psychopath, a villain. But Jack trusted him before, didn't he? He ate the food and took the pills. And, indeed, his pain feels distant now; the wound gives a constant but dull throb. If he could trust his enemy then, why not trust him now? Jack has already lost so much. "I can't trust you," Jack tells him, and his hand slips from the mask and falls to the mattress, where his fingers dig into the holes and prod at the springs, "it's stupid for you to even ask." 

His life was split into three eras. First came the Pre-Gabriel Reyes era, when he had been a boy on a corn farm and later a bright-eyed young soldier who still believed there was good left in the world. There was Post-Gabriel Reyes, which was the hell he lived in now. But the majority of his life, the best of his life, had been the Gabriel Reyes era. It sometimes felt like one single, decades-long, good memory. Things got bad sometimes, especially towards the end, but he had felt that he could handle anything with Gabe at his side, and that they would always come out stronger through whatever challenge they faced. He supposes now, looking back, that lie is the one everyone tells themselves, when they care about someone. It's never true. There is always a turning point, when things are too broken to continue to glue back together. For some people, that turning point takes longer to reach than others. Anyone who pretends otherwise is lying to themselves or delusional. 

He is too old for all this heartache, he thinks, and he closes his eyes as Reaper has asked him to. Perhaps it's a foolish thing to do, but he supposes that he's always been a fool where matters of the heart are concerned. 

The mask comes off. Jack feels Gabe lay it upon his chest, and he raises his hands to touch its cool surface, following its grooves, his fingers sinking into the dips of the eye sockets. He lifts it, finding it heavier than he would have guessed, and brings it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the metal. "Let me touch your face," he implores, setting the mask aside and blindly reaching out above him. 

"You wouldn't want to do that," Gabe says, and Jack is surprised that Gabe's voice sounds almost familiar without the mask in place. 

The bed shifts as Gabe moves above him. A hand comes down over Jack's face, covering his nose and his eyes. There is no warmth in that palm. Jack feels the tickle of those dark vapors as they explore his features, trailing over the wrinkles and scars that mar his face. Jack's lips part, and the smoke seems almost sentient in its eagerness to enter the heat of his mouth. It is tasteless and scentless, but he feels the almost electrical charge of it against his tongue as it slips inside of him. He's afraid to breathe it in. Could it kill him? Is it toxic? But then Gabe's mouth is against his own. Jack is shocked by how dry and cracked his lips are. He inhales, both a gasp of surprise and and sigh of relief, and he feels the tendrils of shadow enter his throat, enter his lungs. Above him, Gabe moans. It sounds like ecstasy. 

Jack tilts his head, pressing forward into Gabe's kiss. At first, he moves too fast, their lips gathering and pulling until he is breathless, but Gabe reels him back in with an easy, steady pace. The heat of it makes Jack melt against the mattress, growing languid beneath Gabe's weight. It's like a homecoming, the way their tongues slide together. That hand stays over his eyes, but Gabe's other hand is moving up his back, raising him off the mattress, drawing him close against his chest. The man feels almost human this way, if it wasn't for the unnatural cold of his mouth and the way his shadows continue to fill Jack up from the inside, like water in a drowning man, except instead of suffocating Jack, this just makes him feel more alive. 

He wants to beg Gabe to let go of Reaper and go back to just being Gabe. He wants to ask Gabe to come home with him. He doesn't have a home, but they could make one. They spent so much of their lives growing old together, and it's time for the final stretch. He longs to tell Gabe all of these things, but he knows it's all mere fantasy, and there's no point in causing an early end to this fragile, one night truce just to bring up impossibilities. So Jack says nothing, and they just keep kissing. He feels like he's in his thirties again, maybe even in his twenties, and he lets himself forget that this must be temporary, that once they're done, they're _done._ There is no happily ever after when their bodies pull apart, there is no future for them outside of this room, but for now he is here, and everything feels right.

"Gabe," Jack sighs, and Gabe nudges their tongues together. The wet clicks of their mouths fill the dark room. The blanket tangles around their legs, the thin fabric the only barrier between his fire-hot skin and the robes of Reaper. They kiss deep and slow, and Jack can feel the fog rising off Gabe and surrounding him completely. It makes all the hairs on his body stand on end as it rolls over his bare skin, dipping into every crevice, exploring and conquering him. His pulse throbs through him, and its quickening riles up the smoke into a frenzy. It dances across his skin like a million microscopic fingertips, and he shudders from the pleasure of the touch.

It takes Jack this long to notice something feels off about Gabe's face, as their mouths come together. The skin of his chin is so thin and brittle, and completely hairless. Jack has never known Gabe to be clean-shaven in the decades they've been friends, so the realization startles him. He reaches shaking hands up to slide around the back of Gabe's head, seeking the tresses of Gabe's thick, coarse hair, but instead his fingers slip over an empty plain of clammy skin. Jack jerks away. Does Gabe still have the soft black hairs that grow in all directions down his forearms? Does he still have the dark patch that starts in a thin line beneath his navel and disappears into the waistband of his pants? Of course, they're older now. Everyone loses hair. Jack's own hairline has crept up higher and higher with each passing year, like it's got some personal problem with his eyebrows. But something tells him that it's not so simple. There is more missing to Gabriel Reyes than just hair. His eyelids quiver against Gabe's palm. 

"I told you that you wouldn't want to touch me," Gabe says.

"I want to see."

"No. You must trust me. _Please._ Just one more time." They're still so close that he can feel Gabe's words caress his face. 

Jack never said such a thing, and he almost opens his mouth to protests this fact, but Gabe silences him with kisses, each one fierce and hard. Jack cannot stop his lips from stretching into a grin against Gabe's insistent mouth. This almost seems like his Gabe, the Gabe before Reaper. He knows this false sense familiarity will only make things harder when the night is over, and every part of him that seems to be healing will only hurt worse in the aftermath, but it's impossible to turn off fire that Gabe ignites inside of him. That has always been impossible, since the moment they first met.

Gabe plants kiss after kiss upon Jack's smile, and Jack pushes back into him, catching Gabe's tongue with his own. The room grows loud with their panting. Gabe uses his free hand, the one that is not still covering Jack's eyes, to peel the blanket away, and Jack's skin is one layer closer to Gabe's. He arches against him, seeking the contact he has craved these long and lonely years. 

"Jack," Gabe teases him, "I never imagined you'd be so eager to see me."

For Jack is already half-hard. He presses against Gabe's thigh, and the contact has him shuddering. When was the last time he could even get it up? He can't even remember. His libido's been rock bottom, but all it takes is five minutes in Gabe's arms to unravel him. Gabe's smoke surrounds him, tingling the sensitive flesh of his cock. Jack twitches as the stuff slithers up his length and begins to solidify as it encircles his head, drawing a moan out of him. Gabe lets his vapors do the work, squeezing life into Jack's weary, neglected sex. He's amazed this withered flesh can even grow so taut and firm again, like years of his life are being shed with each stroke of Gabe's shadows. Jack's breaths are ragged as he grinds into the touch, the mattress springs squealing beneath them. 

"G-Gabe, let me - "

"Do you want me to stop?" Gabe interrupts him.

"No!"

"Then don't fucking talk," Gabe snarls, and silences him with wanting sweeps of his tongue. 

Jack tries to kiss him back, but he's losing control of himself, and, as the pleasure builds, sometimes all his mouth can do is hang agape while Gabe does all the work. He trembles, clenching his fists into the old mattress, his hips bucking up into the near-nothingness of Gabe's swirling, lashing shadows. 

"Keep your eyes closed," Gabe demands, and his frigid palm leaves Jack's flaming face. He tongues a path down Jack's throat to the dip of his breastbone, and Jack sobs and shudders. He's so tempted to steal a glance then, just to watch as Gabe kisses his stomach, moving closer and closer to his dribbling, throbbing cock. Either his fear or his loyalty keep both lids shut tight, though. At least for now. 

Jack writhes when Gabe's lips envelope him, twisting his fingers into the blanket, and he groans Gabe's name, turning one syllable into three. He utters it again, breath hitching, and again, never growing tired of the sound. He's gone so long without saying it that now it's like a dam is breaking, and the name spills from him, out of control. He's ached for this intimacy for so long. He should feel relieved that it's finally happening, but instead his thoughts keep circling how _wrong_ this is. He should feel guilty. He should feel ashamed. He should open his eyes and take in the horror of Reaper, his nemesis, between his legs. Instead, he continues his mantra and spreads his legs to give Gabe more room.

Without his sight, all other senses are heightened. He can hear the wet, slick noises of Gabe's mouth around him and the squealing of the mattress coils under their weight. He still tastes Gabe on his tongue, which feels strangely swollen and oversized in his mouth from the sudden _use,_ after so long of just being a dormant muscle in his mouth. If it hadn't been for such tiny details, Jack might have convinced himself that this was some kind of dream, but it's so real. It's the realest thing he's experienced in years.

Gabe sucks him, hums around him, licks at all the right places. As _off_ as something is about Gabe's cold, dry mouth, it feels divine, holy. Jack's hips rise off the bed, and he splutters out a warning, "I'm gonna cum." 

Gabe is glad to help him, drawing him in deeper. Jack's hips jerk helplessly, thrusting into the back of Gabe's throat. Gabe hardly reacts. There's no gagging, no reaction at all. It's too uncanny. It's like he can't feel it at all.

Jack's eyes fling open as he blows his single, weak thread of cum down Gabe's throat. He can't stop himself. He takes in the sight of Gabe drinking him dry, and all he can do is jerk away with a cry. He turns his face into the mattress, squeezing his eyes closed. No. No, no, no. This can't be the state that his Gabe has been reduced to. He's more corpse than man. Not a single feature is familiar. So pale and rotten, with eyes so black and cold. Jack could have gazed upon the horrors of his visage all day and never been convinced he was looking at Gabriel Reyes. Jack feels tears fall, molten hot. He curls in on himself, pulling free from the monster's mouth and hands. The shock of the sudden switch from ecstasy to terror has his head spinning. All he can think is, where are his clothes? He wants to get out of here. 

Gabe's shadows retreat from Jack's body. The bed shifts. He is pulling away. _"I warned you,"_ Gabe says as he reclaims his mask and then fits it into place. But, really, could anything have warned Jack for how horrible the sight of him is? 

"What the hell happened?" Jack asks, "Who did this to you?" 

_"I told you not to look."_

"What happened?" Jack tries again, "Does it hurt? Are you in pain?" 

But Gabe has risen to his feet and is making his way towards the door. He doesn't even bother picking up his gauntlets, which still lay forgotten on the dusty floor.

Jack watches him go and winces at the snap of the locking door. He wants to call him back, but he knew from the beginning of this encounter that nothing could come out of it. This was going to leave him heartbroken and suffering inside, and he had been aware of that risk from the moment their lips touched. 

His mouth tastes foul. His skin feels filthy. The darkness closes in on him, and he shuts his eyes to escape the shadows, but the skeletal, undead face haunts his thoughts. 

* * *

Jack is woken up by the rain. Not the sound of rain pelting the roof or windowpanes, but the feeling of it falling upon his prone form. His clothes are soaked through, and he is shivering as he opens his eyes, cold to the bone. 

It's dark outside, sometime very late at night or very early in the morning. The sky is black, all stars and moonlight blotted out by dense clouds, and the rain falls steadily, turning the ground beneath him to mud. He's sprawled out behind a building, in a narrow strip of grass around an empty parking lot. It takes him a moment to realize that he's only a couple of blocks away from the construction site that he and Ana have been using as a base. He wonders how he got here and thinks, perhaps, he is dreaming. 

As he scrambles to get out of the rain, pressing in close to the building to shelter beneath the roof, something falls from his hand. It's a plastic bag, the kind one would stick a sandwich in and toss in a lunch box. Inside are a handful of the little pills that Reaper gave him, as well as a note that reads -

_For the pain._

_\- G_

Jack almost laughs. There is no medication to soothe the pain in his chest, a nasty, thousand-pound knot that suffocates and chokes. This is a pain that he will bear until his last breath, whether that's tomorrow or another half a century away. 


End file.
